Thermal paste and cooling Help

[Lord Anubis]

Hi everyone I need your help im planning on building my 1st PC this weekend and i need help in choosing a thermal compound and should i buy a aftermarket cooler or stick with the box cooler for my CPU.

Here are my PC specs.

Motherboard: Asus z170-A 

CPU: Intel Core i5 7500

GPU: Evga GTX 1060 3gb

RAM: 16Gb of HyperX DDR4 

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB

PSU: Evga 600w

 

 

PS: Im planning to play 1080p games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and please suggest 2 or 3 thermal compounds (except Arctic Silver)

 

[VVoltor]

Why a z170 board with a locked CPU?

I'd go for a aftermarket cooler, mainly because they're more quiet. Hyper 212 is cheap and pretty awesome.

 

Thermal compound is pretty much all the same, get Arctic Silver or something, it's popular and works well.

[aisle9]

With a locked CPU, you can just use the stock cooler from the box and the pre-applied paste. No need for anything special or aftermarket.

[Skiiwee29]

Stock cooler is 1000000% adequate for a locked CPU and will not compromise performance or really acoustics much if you tune the fan correctly in the BIOS. 

[Lord Anubis]

24 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

With a locked CPU, you can just use the stock cooler from the box and the pre-applied paste. No need for anything special or aftermarket.

I didnt know there was pre-applied paste why dosent intel say that

[Lord Anubis]

35 minutes ago, VVoltor said:

Why a z170 board with a locked CPU?

I'd go for a aftermarket cooler, mainly because they're more quiet. Hyper 212 is cheap and pretty awesome.

 

Thermal compound is pretty much all the same, get Arctic Silver or something, it's popular and works well.

I plan to buy an OC CPU in the future when i start content creation for now i need a cpu for gaming

[VVoltor]

3 minutes ago, Lord Anubis said:

I plan to buy an OC CPU in the future when i start content creation for now i need a cpu for gaming

Then I'd stick with the stock cooler for now. You can save the money an put it towards an overclocked CPU later, and get a proper cooler with it then.

[Pidgey]

58 minutes ago, Lord Anubis said:

 

PS: Im planning to play 1080p games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and please suggest 2 or 3 thermal compounds (except Arctic Silver)

 

It sounds like you're sticking with the stock cooler/paste, that'll do fine. But for future reference. I would recommend thermal grizzly kryonaut as your thermal compound, tested to be the best, tiny bit pricier. Next option down would be mx-4. and you obviously already know about arctic silver. GL

[aisle9]

8 hours ago, Lord Anubis said:

I didnt know there was pre-applied paste why dosent intel say that

I never assumed they'd have to. Intel boxes its processors assuming that everyone who buys one is opening a PC for the first time. The last thing they want to do is spend thousands replacing CPUs for people who don't know what thermal paste is in the interest of not spending a few cents pre-applying some.

8 hours ago, Pidgey said:

It sounds like you're sticking with the stock cooler/paste, that'll do fine. But for future reference. I would recommend thermal grizzly kryonaut as your thermal compound, tested to be the best, tiny bit pricier.

No. Absolutely no. Kryonaut is spectacular if you're delidding. If you're not, it's a spectacular waste of money. Putting aside shit-tier outliers like the stuff you get 50g of from China for $1.99, the difference in practical use between the best thermal pastes and the worst is consistently found to be less than 5C, usually less than 3C. Spending $14 on 1g of Kryonaut when you can get 4g of MX-4 for half the price is completely unnecessary, and telling others to do so is spreading terrible misinformation.

 

Unless you're delidding. Then Kryonaut away, but liquid metal pastes are a better idea there.

[Pidgey]

On 3/19/2017 at 2:23 AM, Pidgey said:

It sounds like you're sticking with the stock cooler/paste, that'll do fine. But for future reference. I would recommend thermal grizzly kryonaut as your thermal compound, tested to be the best, tiny bit pricier. Next option down would be mx-4. and you obviously already know about arctic silver. GL

 

On 3/19/2017 at 10:52 AM, aisle9 said:

No. Absolutely no. Kryonaut is spectacular if you're delidding. If you're not, it's a spectacular waste of money. Putting aside shit-tier outliers like the stuff you get 50g of from China for $1.99, the difference in practical use between the best thermal pastes and the worst is consistently found to be less than 5C, usually less than 3C. Spending $14 on 1g of Kryonaut when you can get 4g of MX-4 for half the price is completely unnecessary, and telling others to do so is spreading terrible misinformation.

 

Unless you're delidding. Then Kryonaut away, but liquid metal pastes are a better idea there.

Terrible misinformation? You just agreed with the information I gave other than my recommendation, which is my opinion.

 

For me, a few extra bucks for a few degrees celcius is worth it any day, up to 5 degrees as you said. $12 for 1g, which is several uses. $3-4 per use. Tell me where else you can put a few bucks in your pc and make even a fraction of that kind of difference?

 

Regardless, I like top of the line products, so that's what I recommended. For people that would rather save a few bucks, I mentioned mx-4 as a cheaper option.

 

 No misinformation. Stop trying to sound smart, nobody cares, and you just come off as pretentious.

[WMGroomAK]

With aftermarket coolers, I've never really had a problem with the thermal paste supplied.  Not sure if it is worth the extra cash to buy some slightly better thermal paste for a minimal improvement in temps.  If you really need it though, I think the Noctua NT-H1 is fairly good performance per value.  Of course, once you get to the aftermarket cooler, I would definitely read the reviews on the coolers and double check their performance.

[lewdicrous]

On 3/19/2017 at 0:21 PM, Lord Anubis said:

Hi everyone I need your help im planning on building my 1st PC this weekend and i need help in choosing a thermal compound and should i buy a aftermarket cooler or stick with the box cooler for my CPU.

Here are my PC specs.

Motherboard: Asus z170-A 

CPU: Intel Core i5 7500

GPU: Evga GTX 1060 3gb

RAM: 16Gb of HyperX DDR4 

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB

PSU: Evga 600w

 

 

PS: Im planning to play 1080p games like Rise of the Tomb Raider and please suggest 2 or 3 thermal compounds (except Arctic Silver)

 

look for a thermal compound that has a lot of good reviews and transfers heat well, as well as the material used to make the thermal compound.. 

 

the stock cooler "works" but getting an aftermarket one can usually help, and i think most aftermarket coolers come with thermal compound already applied

[WoodenMarker]

1 hour ago, Pidgey said:

For me, a few extra bucks for a few degrees celcius is worth it any day, up to 5 degrees as you said. $12 for 1g, which is several uses. $3-4 per use. Tell me where else you can put a few bucks in your pc and make even a fraction of that kind of difference?

That's ~5c between the best and worst of pastes. The stock intel paste isn't bad and new paste with a cooler with low mounting pressure like the stock cooler isn't going to make much of a difference in temps--maybe 1-2c.

[aisle9]

2 hours ago, Pidgey said:

For me, a few extra bucks for a few degrees celcius is worth it any day, up to 5 degrees as you said. $12 for 1g, which is several uses. $3-4 per use. Tell me where else you can put a few bucks in your pc and make even a fraction of that kind of difference?

No. Still no. The 5C difference is between underperforming "name brand" stuff and the highest-end pastes. Not MX-4 to Kryonaut. I'd be surprised if you were talking much more than 1-2C there--very surprised. Again, unless you delid and use Kryonaut under the top. 

 

If you choose to spend three to four times as much for an improvement of 1C, that's on you, but please don't encourage others to do the same without acknowledging that you hate having to eat your excess money, but sometimes you have difficulty finding other things to do with it. MX-4 is more than enough for 99% of PC owners.

[WMGroomAK]

@aisle9, @Pidgey, @Lord Anubis  Just figure I would toss this in, although it is a couple of years old...  Basically in their testing on an Air Cooling setup, the difference between Kryonaut and MX-4 was 1.1 C.  The difference between Kryonaut and the worst performing thermal paste was 8.5 C.  

 

http://overclocking.guide/thermal-paste-roundup-2015-47-products-tested-with-air-cooling-and-liquid-nitrogen-ln2/6/

 

[Pidgey]

4 hours ago, aisle9 said:

No. Still no. The 5C difference is between underperforming "name brand" stuff and the highest-end pastes. Not MX-4 to Kryonaut. I'd be surprised if you were talking much more than 1-2C there--very surprised. Again, unless you delid and use Kryonaut under the top. 

 

If you choose to spend three to four times as much for an improvement of 1C, that's on you, but please don't encourage others to do the same without acknowledging that you hate having to eat your excess money, but sometimes you have difficulty finding other things to do with it. MX-4 is more than enough for 99% of PC owners.

Thought it was clear I was quoting you on 5 degrees... of course there's not a 5 degree difference in two of the top pastes, liquid metal can barely do that. I  would personally guess up to 2 degrees difference between kryo and mx4 if applied identically. I used it before and after delid, so I'm a fan. Easy decision for me, not for others. I was just providing accurate info saying kryo was pricey but best, mx was cheaper, and a good 2nd choice. Sounds like everyone agrees. Not "terrible misinformation" as you called it.